Top 30 Emily Mortimer Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Every time you start a new job, you’re starting from the beginning again and it’s terrifying. And you feel like you’re going to be fired and told to go home and never to darken the doors of these people ever again.”

— Emily Mortimer

2. “It’s dangerous talking about yourself too much because you find yourself talking in sound bites.”

— Emily Mortimer

3. “You don’t have to be brilliant at everything. You just have to have the courage to put yourself in the line of fire.”

— Emily Mortimer

4. “I am a good mother and I feel proud about it.”

— Emily Mortimer

5. “Los Angeles is like a beauty parlor at the end of the universe.”

— Emily Mortimer

6. “I have to say that, though it sounds so superficial, the accent really does help. I like having accents preparing for a part.”

— Emily Mortimer

7. “Breakfast is my favorite meal. I cook a big one for everyone – bacon and eggs. I own a lot of eggcups.”

— Emily Mortimer

8. “I’m a dual citizen, as are my husband and children. We have got eight passports between us; we’re weighed down by them whenever we go anywhere.”

— Emily Mortimer

9. “I borrowed my friends car the other day in an attempt to persuade my husband that we needed a car and literally this is true, in the first day of borrowing the car, I got three tickets and I rear-ended it.”

— Emily Mortimer

10. “I had watched Alfie, but I didn’t consider it a prerequisite. Michael Caine was just extremely fabulous. He’s one of the most professional actors I’ve ever worked with. I guess after a lifetime of doing it, you know what you’re doing. He’s incredibly uncomplaining, undemanding.”

— Emily Mortimer

11. “51st State was one that I loved doing because the character was so out there, and in a way I was sad to leave the character behind. I’m afraid I could never be that cool in real life!”

— Emily Mortimer

12. “I’m an optimist by nature, myself, I think.”

— Emily Mortimer

13. “I’ve only half-admitted I’m a professional. I know I am, I’ve paid my dues, but one of the things I could do better when I’m acting is to really be rigorous and to think I know how to do it. To use my brain.”

— Emily Mortimer

14. “When I’m panicked about my love handles, I go to the YMCA and get obsessed with Kid Rock videos as I’m on the running machine.”

— Emily Mortimer

15. “I already feel a bit annoyed at myself for writing screenplays. It’s a bit, I don’t know, model-singer-dancer-actress that went to a posh school. There’s something too weirdly predictable about it.”

— Emily Mortimer

16. “I’m always sort of anticipating life being difficult, but on a basic level, that’s sort of on the surface, on a basic level, I’m optimistic in the sense that I think it’s all going to be alright in the end.”

— Emily Mortimer

17. “I’m physically completely mal-coordinated. My best friend used to make me run for the bus just to give herself a quick, cheap laugh because I definitely don’t have that sophisticated cool thing down.”

— Emily Mortimer

18. “I had friends at school, but I was never part of a gang and I dreamed of that sense of belonging to a group. You know, where people would call me ‘Em’ and shout across the bar, ‘Em, what are you drinking?’ after the show.”

— Emily Mortimer

19. “You are exposing yourself all the time as an actor. There’s the risk of being thought of as bad or boring or unattractive.”

— Emily Mortimer

20. “I was terribly shy when I was growing up, I really wasn’t confident with other people and I think I was always afraid of up or not being this very cool, amazing person that I wanted to be.”

— Emily Mortimer

21. “It is brilliant going to the theatre and being forced to sit and listen and think about life. It can be almost a near-religious experience.”

— Emily Mortimer

22. “I did my homework and didn’t go out much, and had a very highly developed kitsch fantasy life where I dreamed of being a dancing girl.”

— Emily Mortimer

23. “Despite being extremely professional, Michael Caine has a giggle which was lethal for me because once you catch his eyes, once you realize the other person is a giggler too, it’s curtains.”

— Emily Mortimer

24. “I guess secrets are part of the fabric of everybody’s lives. I mean everybody’s lives, and guilt is part of the fabric of everybody’s lives.”

— Emily Mortimer

25. “Doing press is like eating at McDonald’s: while it’s going on it’s vaguely enjoyable – you’re seduced by your own vanity and taking yourself rather seriously – but immediately afterwards you feel sick.”

— Emily Mortimer

26. “Accents are very tangible, blessedly, and if you have to do one, it’s a way of getting into character. I can read it through a few times and pretend I know what I’m doing!”

— Emily Mortimer

27. “I want any excuse to come home. My dad is not a spring chicken any more. If anyone says, ‘Go buy a postage stamp in London,’ I’ll go and do it.”

— Emily Mortimer

28. “So far I haven’t really been prominent enough to get critical attention focused on me. So, of course, I fully expect bad reviews, but I will be wracked with misery as a result.”

— Emily Mortimer

29. “In my first few years as an actor, I took one terrible TV job after another. But even as I laughed off my awful roles and made fun of myself to friends, my work made me cringe – I dreaded anyone’s seeing it. I was crushed that I wasn’t doing anything I was proud of.”

— Emily Mortimer

30. “I want to discover more things about acting.”

— Emily Mortimer

31. “I’m just happy to be a film where for once I don’t have to worry about my hair, because my managers are always complaining about my hair looking depressing in my movies. Which is true. I mean, it’s true.”

— Emily Mortimer

32. “My dad had this philosophy that if you tell children they’re beautiful and wonderful then they believe it, and they will be. So I never thought I was unattractive. But I was never one of the girls at school who had lots of boyfriends.”

— Emily Mortimer

33. “I never felt I was quite the ticket academically. I always felt I had to put in an enormous amount of effort not to be disappointing. So I worked really hard, but at the time it suited me, because I didn’t do very much else.”

— Emily Mortimer

34. “I must have been a really pretentious little girl.”

— Emily Mortimer